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Anonymous Heroes --
Our Close Call
4/22/01
Blaine Parks
“Janet, the helm is stuck hard over
to port. I can’t get her to
budge and we’re drifting back into the docks.“
Those were the last words Janet wanted to hear, but there we
were slipping back into the St. Augustine Municipal Marina’s docks –
sideways and very quickly. There
was nothing to do but wait for the “thud” as our port beam headed for
the end of a finger pier. Our
bow continued to be carried by the strong current, pushing Charbonneau’s
bow dangerously close to a large trawler in one of the slips.
Janet and I watched in horror as our boat, and our home, closed the
distance to the dock. We were
at the complete mercy of the wind and tide.
Just before we hit the dock (and the
very expensive trawler), ten complete strangers fended us off the docks
– for the fourth time in less than 30 minutes.
All of them struggled to keep Charbonneau from damaging herself or
others. All of them focused
on keeping us off the docks and helping us reposition for another attempt
at getting away safely. All
of them used every ounce of their strength to maneuver us in the 15-20
knots of wind and running tide. All
of them were boaters and most had been in this very predicament themselves
at one time or another. And
all of them had completely disappeared in the thirty minutes it took us to
go anchor the boat and return to the dock in our dinghy to thank them.
The ten strangers probably won’t
remember how close we came to doing serious damage to Charbonneau. But, we’ll never forget them or the others like them.
Boaters have a way of coming to the aid of other boaters in
distress. In a time when
helping others is on the decline, its refreshing to see that the boating
community still places value on helping each other in times of need.
I can’t begin to remember all the times we’ve helped boats in
or out of slips, helped boats who were aground, or shared our good fortune
of fishing with complete strangers. In most cases, we never even got their name.
It didn’t matter at the time.
They needed help and we offered ourselves completely.
Well, today was our turn to need help.
And they turned out in large numbers to save our home today.
The wind had been blowing across our
beam all morning. The tide
was going out, which meant that Charbonneau would be pushed back into her
slip if left to her own whims.
We did all the right things. We’d
seen conditions like this before. We
had two line handlers controlling the boat as we backed out into the
narrow turning basin. We
pulled out of our slip sweetly and retrieved our lines from our friends on
the dock. However, as we
began to make our starboard turn out of the marina, the wind and current
gripped our bow and wouldn’t let her turn up into the wind.
If we couldn’t get the bow through the wind, the boat was
destined to drift back into the docks, sideways.
That’s just what happened. Not
once, but on four separate attempts.
On our fourth attempt, we had pulled
out our staysail and back-winded it to help push the bow through the wind
and away from the docks. It
worked!!! Then, just as we
pulled away and throttled up to fight the current, the helm locked
completely! It was stuck hard over to port and there wasn’t enough time
to consider the possible causes. We
were headed right back into the docks, again.
We were so frustrated. We
were so close and now a jammed rudder had us helplessly drifting back into
the docks.
As the ten strangers pulled us back to
the safety of an open slip, I began inspecting the helm, the rudder, and
the autopilot. I was looking
for anything that could be causing the rudder to jam.
The helm looked fine, the rudder didn’t appear to have anything
jammed or caught. Then, I
looked at the autopilot. It
was engaged and was holding the rudder firmly to port, just as it is
supposed to do when it’s turned ON!!!
Max and Bailey had been perfectly calm, lying in the cockpit during
our multiple attempts to leave the docks.
On the last attempt, Bailey must have leaned into the autopilot
controls with his rump and hit the ‘ON’ button -- just at the wrong
moment. I wanted to scream at
him, but he looked up as if to say, “I’m sorry.
I was trying to be calm and stay out of your way.”
So instead, he got a pat on the head and was rewarded with laughter
from everyone at the docks.
We waved to the ten strangers as we
finally pulled away and said that we’d be right back to buy beers for
everyone. We went
through St. Augustine’s Bridge of Lions, dropped the hook, and quickly
returned to the dock hoping to meet and thank these ten strangers who had
just saved our home. Not a
single one of these ten strangers could be found.
We don’t know their names. We
don’t know where they came from. And,
we don’t know where they left to so quickly.
It was like they were never there.
They had been there in our time of need, as we have been for so
many others, only to vanish when it was time to say thanks.
I suppose that no thanks were really necessary.
As boaters, we all realize that our time of need may be just around
the corner.
If
you happen to be one of those ten strangers, our anonymous heroes, and
read this article – Thank you. |
